On my youtube channel I use Kimiko Ishizaka's open source bach recordings (under CC0) as background music. I got copyright claims every single time (from the same trolls -- forget their name). Eventually, when replying I got the idea to say, "You have made a claim on the same recordings for every single one of my videos. You have subsequently relinquished the claim when you discovered that I had a license to use this music. Given that you know that I have a valid license, you seem to be acting in bad faith. Please do not flag my videos again".

And, you know what? It seems to have worked. They never flagged me again.

Glad to hear this!

It's a complicated problem. In classical music, ContentID has a hard time differentiating between various recordings of say the Goldberg Variations. People were getting dozens of ContentID matches from Glenn Gould, Andras Schiff, and so forth, and each time they'd dispute the claim, the next one would come with a different recording. Nobody was doing anything nefarious, but you couldn't get any peace. Soe we (Kimiko and myself) decided to put her music into ContentID ourselves. Now it mostly identifies correctly as Kimiko's recordings, and people can ask us ([email protected]) to de-monetize any video where the ads bother them. Some people don't mind, and as a result, Kimiko gets a small amount of revenue for her work as well.

Write a letter to your state DA asking them to pursue barratry charges against the lawfirm.

Unfortunately (?) neither I nor the company claiming infringement are in the US. I think the reason they actually gave up is not for legal reasons, but because they have to abide by Youtube's terms of service in order to make claims. If Youtube kicks them out, they lose their revenue stream, so potentially serious for them.

I have a video of my own noise generator audio plugin. It's repeatedly been copyright struck by somebody who's put white noise into YouTube's ContentID. Every time I notice this pop up again I dispute the claim and they give up.

They're not in the US. I think they were East German? This is not new, I'm sure it's literally the same people.

> Kimiko Ishizaka's open source bach recordings (under CC0)

Thanks for the pointer. I hadn't heard her recordings of the WTC and Art of Fugue, and they seem pretty good.

Unfortunately the only part that has to be under penalty of perjury is a declaration that "the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed." So even if these are bullshit, as long as they are acting behalf of the owner of the work they claim it to infringe, they haven't perjured themselves.

And that's for a standard DMCA takedown, which these may not have been. I believe YouTube has their own process separate from the DMCA which may have looser requirements. (They still have to accept standard DMCA takedowns to get the safe harbor protection, but it doesn't mean they can only act on takedowns that are DMCA compliant)

They likely weren't. ContentID enforcement doesn't require a DMCA takedown request. It's essentially a pre-get-laywers-involved level of enforcement. That makes YouTube the judge.

The industry was careful when they wrote the DMCA to make sure it couldn't be used against them. Theoretically our lawmakers should have taken the public interest to heart before passing the bill, but that appears to have been too much work.

Isn't youtube's suck up to industry style of process not at all subject to that sort of penalty?